Michael Cooper was running a camp in Pasadena in 1994 when Lisa Leslie challenged him to a slam dunk contest. As Cooper said, “The way you won was by the applause of the kids.” So, Leslie went up, made her first dunk, and the “crowd went crazy and I lost.” Thirty-two years later, Cooper was, of course, sure to be among the speakers on Sunday, September 20, when the Sparks unveiled an 11-foot bronze statue of Leslie mid-dunk at Star Plaza outside Crypto.com Arena.
Sunday gave Los Angeles a permanent way to celebrate what Leslie built. The ceremony brought together Lakers legends Magic Johnson, Byron Scott, James Worthy and Cooper, former Sparks teammate Candace Parker and her USC coach, Marianne Stanley.
James Worthy posted a photo on X with his former Showtime teammates Magic Johnson, Michael Cooper, and Byron Scott while celebrating Leslie’s honor at Star Plaza. “Celebrating the great Lisa Leslie getting her statue with my Showtime teammates,” Worthy wrote.
LeBron James shared the image of Leslie’s statue on his Instagram story, writing, “Congratulations Lisa” alongside a collection of fire and clapping emojis. Meanwhile, Johnson, who spoke at the ceremony, recalled Leslie coming to UCLA to play pickup basketball with men rather than women, saying he and Cooper watched her dominate the competition.
Cooper went even further in his praise. Speaking in an interview later shared by Nick Hamilton on X, the former Lakers star and Leslie’s championship-winning coach called the recognition long overdue and placed her above every other player in WNBA history.
“About time,” Cooper said. “She is, to me, and I’ve been in the WNBA from ground zero, the greatest WNBA player to ever play the game.”
He coached her through the Sparks’ championship seasons in 2001 and 2002, and the first title ended the Houston Comets’ run of four straight. After Houston swept the Sparks out of the 2000 playoffs, Leslie worked out with Cooper four days a week for six months, ESPN reported at the time.
Cooper also compared Leslie’s development to Lakers legends he personally witnessed grow into icons: James Worthy and Magic Johnson, recalling Leslie arriving at the gym early to work on post moves. Like Worthy’s spin, Johnson’s baby hook, and Hakeem Olajuwon’s baseline fake and turnaround jumper.
Then he pointed to what he said Leslie had over them.
“The thing she has on them is that Lisa did that while she was having kids. You know, for eight months, at one point in time before she had her first daughter, her first child, she was at the gym, her and I, was practicing at eight o’clock every morning up until she was eight months pregnant.”
The 11-foot bronze statue, named The First Lady, sits atop a 4½-foot base. Sculptors Omri Amrany and Julie Rotblatt Amrany created it, and Leslie traveled to Chicago to meet them to make sure it turned out the way she wanted it to. Leslie is the 16th person honored in Star Plaza, the first Sparks player and the second woman, after Gigi Bryant. It opened for public viewing Monday.
Leslie spent all 12 of her WNBA seasons with LA, and her three MVP awards came in 2001, 2004, and 2006. She then entered the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.
Leslie told the Chiney Today podcast the statue carries four pieces of gold, one for each Olympic gold medal. At the ceremony, she said she wore ribbons as a player so little girls could see them, and that she wanted them “to be able to see themselves in me.”
As for the dunk story, it was in the Sparks’ first game, on June 21, 1997, that Leslie attempted one and could not finish it. But on July 30, 2002, she took an outlet pass near midcourt, dribbled twice, and threw down a one-handed dunk against the Miami Sol at Staples Center, the first in WNBA history. The Sparks lost that night, 82-73, but the move was memorable enough for the Sparks to put it in bronze twenty-four years later.